NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: CORONA; New Worshipers Are Bane, Not Balm, for Old Synagogue

For years, the approach of Rosh ha-Shanah, the Jewish New Year, was a marker of a doomed destiny at Congregation Tifereth Israel, the last synagogue in Corona. Each year, old members died and no new ones arrived to take their places. The paint began to peel and the grass grew longer. So each Rosh ha-Shanah, worshipers at the synagogue, near 108th Street and 54th Avenue, prayed for new people to come and save their synagogue.

Eventually new worshipers did arrive. But they brought strange customs and no money. Bitterness and resentment reigned as the last few people from the old congregation felt alienated in their own place. Six months ago, the synagogue's president and only remaining member, Benjamin Fried, 82, locked the doors on his fellow Jews.

Once a center of Orthodox life with four synagogues, Corona has changed over the years, its population shifting from mainly Eastern European Jews to Italians and to Hispanic residents. Built around 1911, the Tifereth Israel, a towering structure, is in dire need of a coat of paint, and some members say the heating system is broken. Money is scarce. There are not enough men for a minyan, the quorum of 10 required for a prayer service.

Two years ago, a solution seemed at hand when a group of Bukharan Jews began worshiping in the synagogue's basement. They were among the nearly 40,000 Jews who had fled the former Soviet Union and settled in Queens in the last decade, said the executive director of the Queens Jewish Community Council, Manny Behar. ''Things have hit a critical mass,'' Mr. Behar explained. ''There are many impoverished people looking for affordable housing, and Corona is affordable. All it has, though, is this one synagogue.''

Mr. Fried said he allowed the new immigrants to worship in the basement although they were Sephardic Jews and the congregation's members were Ashkenazim. That seemed tolerable, Mr. Fried said, until the arrival six months ago of Rabbi Amnun Khaimov, a charismatic leader of the Sephardic worshipers, who brought about 100 followers.

''They wanted to pray their own way,'' Mr. Fried said. ''They came and they wanted to take the place over. I could not just let that happen. My father put it together with his hands. I was bar mitzvahed and married there. It is where I learned my life.'' He locked them out, allowing them access only on the Sabbath and holidays.

''Fried he said to me: 'You have no money. God cannot pay your bills,' '' Rabbi Khaimov said. ''It is true. We are many poor people, but we only want a place to pray.''

A Holocaust survivor, Viola Milne, who had worshiped at the synagogue, filed lawsuits on behalf of the Bukharans in both the Rabbinical Court of Greater Queens and State Supreme Court in Queens. The rabbinical court ruled that the synagogue must be opened to any group that wished to pray and that repairs must be made with the little money that the congregation did have, said Rabbi Yitzchak Sladowsky, the vice president of the rabbinical association that oversees the rabbinical court. On Sept. 24, Justice Joseph G. Golia of State Supreme Court upheld the rabbinical court's decision, and Mr. Fried once again turned the keys to the synagogue. CHARLIE LeDUFF